IT’S A REAL LIFE STORY

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”(John14:6)

Today is Friday and I buried my mom just 5 days ago.   She was 82 and diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer 4 months ago.  My brothers and I went to Memphis every week since her diagnosis and simply made memories.  She spent the last 3 weeks of her life in a hospital and then back to a nursing facility with Hospice.  We were able to have at least one of us with her every day those last weeks; in fact, we were there holding her hand when she took her last breath here and opened her eyes to GLORY!  One of the last things she said, “It’s a real life story!”

Three nights before mom went home to Jesus, she woke up in the middle of the night and told my brother 2 times, very clearly, “It’s a real life story-it’s a real life story.”  The next day, as she we was slowly progressing toward non-responsiveness, I was joking with her trying to get a reply and she smiled and said,”I am not crazy.”  Those are the last words mom said this side of Heaven.  I believe God has given me a revelation as to what mom meant but I will share that in a minute.

 We spent the next couple of days talking to her, sharing memories and looking at old photographs, assuming she could still hear us since hospice said hearing was the last sense to go.  We rubbed her feet and hands, constantly watching as Hospice never took their eyes and hearts off of her.  We witnessed angels with green jackets( that would be the Hospice jacket color) gently usher mom from this world to the next, and I know Jesus’ hand picked up right where their hands left off!    I am eternally grateful for every nurse, doctor, patient care assistant and Hospice angel who loved my mom with dignity, grace, gentleness and kindness.  They exuded goodness, faithfulness, self-control, love, joy , peace and tons of patience (fruit of the Spirit) as they ministered to my mom! “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples”(John15:8) These were some “Fruit Bearing Disciples”, if I have ever seen any, and they didn’t have to say a word to know who they follow! 

Back to that revelation, the last 2 sentences my mom said, although at 2 different times, were,”It’s a real life story and I am not crazy.”  I did not see them as connected when my brother and I shared our last moments with her with each other but I see now that they were. 

My dad died 22 years ago at the age of 63 but he had a near death experience at the age of 42.  He had his first heart attack at 42 and was hospitalized with a quadruple bypass surgery.  He was in excruciating pain and Jesus visited him in the hospital, held his hand, eased his pain and told him it was not yet his time to go home.  My father shared that story with me when I was a teenager, but what I didn’t know until his funeral was that for the next 20 years he would spend his lunch hours sharing that story on the cardiac floor of the hospital.  The doctors told him that he had been hallucinating, that it had been the medicine, and that he was simply imagining the appearance of a Christlike figure but he knew better!  Dad knew that he “was not crazy” and that “it’s a real life story!”  He was so certain of this “TRUTH” that nothing could keep him from sharing it!

Fast forward to last week and my mom’s last words!  The Bible is a story and it is true!  It is the story of how God loves us and came to rescue us and the whole Bible is about Jesus!  I pulled out my kids “Story Bible” and I love the introduction: “It takes the whole Bible to tell the STORY.  And at the center of the Story, there is a baby.  Every story in the Bible whispers HIS name.  He is like the missing piece in a puzzle-the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.”  It is a fairy tale that came true in “real life”!  

You see, I believe, my mom got a glimpse of Glory and wanted to make sure she relayed that message once again to her children.  I believe she saw proof of the “unseen being more real than the seen” and she wanted to make sure that we knew it was not medicine, hallucination, imagination or lunacy that made her say what she said.  

Mom’s funeral was a celebration of her life but more importantly it was a celebration of God and the work HE did on the Cross.  The Gospel was proclaimed and mom’s “light shone before others, that they saw her good deeds and glorified her Father in Heaven.”(Matt5:16)

Dear Lord,

Thank you for giving me a mom that loved Jesus.  Thank you for the time YOU gave me over these last few months with her and with my brothers and for memories that culminate in mom telling us one last time “It’s a real life story and I am not crazy.”  Lord you were accused of being a liar and crazy but we know the TRUTH!  YOU truly are the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through YOU!  My mom went to the Father through YOU and I plan to follow in her footsteps when YOU SAY SO!

GoGod